More than a month’s rainfall crashed down on the central Philippines in less than 24 hours this week. Entire neighborhoods that had withstood decades of typhoons were obliterated. Streets transformed into raging rivers. The death toll mounted: 114 confirmed dead, 127 still missing, nearly 1.9 million displaced or affected. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared a national state of calamity as rescue teams waded through waist-deep waters, plucking residents from rooftops and submerged homes.
Yet as the Philippines grapples with the catastrophic aftermath of Typhoon Kalmaegi, a more damning story emerges from beneath the floodwaters. The very infrastructure designed to protect these communities from such disasters—and funded by billions of pesos—either never existed or was catastrophically deficient. Ghost projects. Substandard work. Billions in diverted funds. Officials now face a reckoning: How many of the 114 dead might still be alive if flood control systems had been properly built?
Cebu Governor Pam Baricuatro, surveying the wreckage in her province where 71 of the confirmed deaths occurred, voiced the bitter realization: “₱26 billion ($440 million) of flood control funds for Cebu yet we are flooded to the max.” Her words capture not just the scale of destruction but the systemic betrayal underlying it. In July, when President Marcos visited Bulacan province to inspect infrastructure projects, he grew visibly angry. Engineers stood before him, admitting they had certified projects as complete based on paperwork alone—without ever visiting the construction sites. A ₱55-million revetment in Baliwag didn’t exist. Dozens more projects like it scattered across the archipelago: phantom structures that existed only in official records.
For Filipinos already reeling from a 6.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Cebu just 37 days earlier and killed at least 74 people, Typhoon Kalmaegi represented a compounding catastrophe. The earthquake had displaced thousands, damaged schools and hospitals, left communities vulnerable. Then came the typhoon. The convergence of two major disasters within weeks exposed not nature’s cruelty alone but human negligence on a staggering scale.
When Rainfall Becomes a Weapon
The Philippines typically expects certain threats from the heavens. Lying in the Pacific typhoon belt, the nation experiences approximately 20 named storms annually—more than almost any other country on Earth. Typhoons are a fact of life here. Families know to secure loose items, listen for warnings, wait out the storm. But Typhoon Kalmaegi was different in both its intensity and its timing.
The storm made landfall on Tuesday as a Category 2 hurricane, moving with unusual slowness across the densely populated central provinces. This sluggish pace transformed what might have been a powerful but survivable typhoon into something far more sinister: a deluge machine. In just 24 hours, some locations in Leyte and northern Mindanao recorded between 150 to 250 millimeters of rain—six to ten inches—in a single day. The monthly average for November is typically far less.
In Cebu city and surrounding municipalities, residents reported that floodwaters rose with terrifying speed. Marlon Enriquez, a 58-year-old who has lived in Cebu for nearly 16 years, told witnesses that the water “rapidly surged in, leaving no time to collect belongings.” He added: “I’ve lived here for nearly 16 years, and this is the first time I’ve experienced such flooding.” Entire rows of houses in Talisay city were leveled. Vehicles swept away by currents created blockages in streets. Communities along the Mananga River were buried under debris. The Mananga itself, typically manageable, became a raging torrent that swept homes from their foundations.
CNN meteorologist Taylor Ward noted a critical reality that often escapes public attention: “People often focus on wind speed, which is how meteorologists classify these storms, but water is nearly always the leading cause of fatalities.” The majority of deaths in Typhoon Kalmaegi were caused by drowning and drowning-related incidents—people trapped by rising floodwaters, swept away by currents, buried under collapsed structures weakened by saturation.
The rapid rise of water created a catastrophic evacuation problem. Cebu Governor Baricuatro described the province’s experience as “by far the worst flash flood caused by a typhoon” in its history, affecting over 35 municipalities. “People had no time to flee; all they could do was head up to their roofs,” she said. Rescue teams mobilized frantically, navigating through the murky waters to reach stranded residents. Aerial footage showed a landscape transformed into a vast, muddy inland sea.
But the disaster’s severity, officials now acknowledge, was exacerbated by a factor that had nothing to do with climate or atmospheric conditions. It had to do with infrastructure corruption.
The Phantom Infrastructure
For years, the Philippines has struggled with flooding. The nation is among Asia’s most flood-prone countries, a consequence of its geography, climate, and increasingly, its building patterns. The government has spent enormous sums attempting to address this vulnerability. Flood-control spending surged from ₱90 billion in 2020 to around ₱244 billion in 2024, making it one of the Department of Public Works and Highways’ top budget priorities, rivaling road construction.
The logic was sound: if the Philippines faced such endemic flooding risk, investing heavily in protective infrastructure made sense. But something went catastrophically wrong in the implementation.
A series of government investigations conducted in 2025 revealed a stunning pattern: many of the flood-control projects funded since President Marcos took office in 2022 were either non-existent, left unfinished, or completed with such poor quality that they offered little protection. Billions of dollars disappeared through a web of kickbacks, overpriced materials, and payments for work that was never performed.
The Independent Commission for Infrastructure, investigating allegations of corruption, uncovered project after project that matched this template. A ₱99-million flood management project in Bocaue, Bulacan was supposed to have been completed in January 2025. Commission on Audit inspectors found no signs of construction. Payments had been made based on falsified statements claiming work was underway. District engineers and DPWH officials had certified completion based on documentation, without site visits.
The scandal rippled across multiple provinces. A ₱55-million revetment in Baliwag was flagged as a “ghost project.” In late October, the Independent Commission for Infrastructure recommended criminal and administrative charges against several high-ranking officials, including a former public works undersecretary and two sitting senators. Contractors with political connections remained largely shielded from scrutiny, their influence protecting them from accountability even as communities drowned.
One investigation by the Council for People’s Development and Governance revealed how tightly contracts were concentrated: at least 15 companies cornered a fifth of DPWH’s flood-control budget. Firms such as QM Builders, Wawao Builders, St. Timothy Construction, and Alpha & Omega Builders faced questions about their actual capacity to deliver work, allegations of dummy ownership, and suspected links to officials with regulatory influence. A Senate inquiry pointed out possible conflicts of interest within the Philippine Contractors Accreditation Board, where members were tied to companies repeatedly winning contracts.
The human cost of this systemic theft was rendered starkly visible by Typhoon Kalmaegi. Deputy Administrator Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV of the Philippines Office of Civil Defense told media that blocked waterways and inadequate drainage systems in regions already susceptible to flooding, combined with a “clear lack of understanding regarding early warnings,” compounded the disaster. But beyond these technical failures lay a more fundamental issue: if the billions allocated for protective infrastructure had actually been spent on functional infrastructure, would the flooding have been as severe?
A Perfect Storm of Crises
The timing of Typhoon Kalmaegi made it uniquely devastating. The storm arrived just over a month after the magnitude 6.9 earthquake that devastated Cebu on September 27, 2025. That earthquake killed at least 74 people and displaced thousands. Schools and hospitals sustained damage. Infrastructure was weakened. Communities were displaced into temporary shelters or with relatives.
When the typhoon struck weeks later, many structures that had survived the earthquake were already compromised. Ground that had been saturated by the earthquake was more susceptible to mudslides triggered by heavy rain. Displaced families had minimal resources to prepare for or survive a new disaster. The compound effect transformed what might have been a serious but manageable natural disaster into a humanitarian crisis of extraordinary scale.
President Marcos acknowledged this reality, noting that Typhoon Kalmaegi marked the region’s 20th named storm impact of the year. While not the most powerful typhoon to hit the Philippines in 2025, its slow movement and the vulnerability of affected regions made it uniquely destructive.
Adding to the urgency: another typhoon was approaching. Fung-Wong, locally known as Uwan, was tracking toward the region and expected to strengthen to a dangerous intensity by the weekend, with potential to bring additional flooding to northern Luzon and further stress regional relief efforts.
The Accountability Reckoning
Public anger over the flood-control corruption predated Typhoon Kalmaegi by months. In September 2025, Filipinos staged a mass protest on September 21, demanding that government officials and contractors involved in the ghost projects be held accountable. The government responded by creating an independent commission to investigate. In late October, that commission recommended charges against high-ranking officials and contractors.
But as of early November, no one had been jailed.
“The public really needs to see someone be put in jail,” said Jean Franco, a professor of political science at the University of the Philippines, speaking to TIME magazine. “I think that’s something that will kind of put initial closure on this.” Franco emphasized that public demands went beyond low-level contractors. Filipinos wanted politicians held accountable—they wanted to see systemic complicity addressed.
Vince Dizon, the newly appointed Secretary of Public Works and Highways brought in specifically to end corruption in infrastructure projects, promised to jail someone by Christmas. But civil society groups were growing impatient. Father Wilmer Tria, national secretariat of the Trillion Peso March movement, called the investigating commission a “plunderer’s laundromat,” where politicians were “dumped in the washing machine, spun for a bit” and emerged clean.
The Trillion Peso March planned another nationwide protest for November 30. Marcos urged the protest to remain peaceful, after pockets of violence marred the September demonstration.
Political scientist Cleve Arguelles warned that the persistent cycle of disasters could sustain the rage-fueled movement indefinitely. “There is that understanding that we have to outlast those who are involved,” Arguelles said, “because the practice in the Philippines, especially if it involves big politicians, big dynastic politicians, is that they just try to wait and try to outlast public indignation.”
Some observers pointed to historical precedent. The Philippines had experienced mass protest movements that toppled leaders before—most notably in the late 1980s when dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was ousted, and in 2001 when President Joseph Estrada was removed from office. If the government failed to adequately address the corruption scandal, Arguelles suggested, popular pressure could escalate to similar levels.
Climate Change and Intensifying Storms
Beyond the immediate corruption scandal, Typhoon Kalmaegi also illustrated a longer-term crisis: climate change is making typhoons more dangerous and difficult to predict.
The western Pacific remains the most active tropical basin globally. But ocean temperatures have reached record highs for eight consecutive years, with 2025 setting new records. Warmer oceans provide abundant energy for storm intensification. Climate change doesn’t necessarily increase the number of typhoons, but it does increase their ferocity and the amount of moisture they can carry—which translates to more intense rainfall.
Scientists studying Hurricane Melissa earlier in 2025 found that climate change had made the storm more intense and destructive through rapid intensification mechanisms. The same mechanism applied to Typhoon Kalmaegi. Warmer air can retain more moisture, which then falls upon communities already stressed by poor drainage, degraded infrastructure, and corruption-weakened protective systems.
Research documented in climate change hurricane studies shows how ocean temperatures have become the critical variable. “Global warming has made extreme rainfall more intense by approximately 7 percent for every degree of warming,” explained a study from the international climate research network. When communities lack proper drainage and flood control infrastructure—particularly when that infrastructure was never actually built—the consequences become catastrophic.
Vietnam, now in the path of Kalmaegi, was bracing for impact. An estimated 350,000 people were expected to evacuate in Gia Lai province. Vietnam had already been devastated by recent flooding that killed at least 13 people, affected over 116,000 residences, and inundated 5,000 hectares of farmland. Roads and railways sustained damage; power was disrupted in several regions. The ancient UNESCO World Heritage site of Hoi An was submerged in water and mud. “I witnessed floods many times; this is the worst I have ever seen,” said 60-year-old Tran Van An to Reuters.
The convergence of climate change, infrastructure corruption, and inadequate governance created a multilayered crisis affecting the entire region. International disaster experts, according to Reliefweb, noted that disaster risk reduction frameworks urgently needed to integrate climate adaptation with stronger institutional accountability.
The Road Ahead
As Typhoon Kalmaegi turned toward Vietnam and rescue operations continued in the Philippines, officials faced urgent questions. How many more ghost projects existed? How deep did the corruption network extend? Would the infrastructure that had been built actually function when tested by future storms?
For survivors in Cebu and neighboring provinces, these were not abstract questions. They were living with the consequences of decisions made in distant offices by people motivated by profit. Entire communities were reduced to rubble. Families had lost everything. Some were still missing, presumed dead.
International humanitarian organizations mobilized rapidly, with disaster relief operations targeting the most vulnerable populations in affected provinces. The response drew on frameworks developed through previous crises, yet the scale of this disaster strained existing coordination mechanisms.
Governor Baricuatro’s frustrated statement—that ₱26 billion allocated for flood control in her province had not prevented catastrophic flooding—embodied the central tragedy: resources had been available. Money had been spent. Infrastructure projects had been authorized. Yet the protection those resources should have provided simply did not exist.
President Marcos had ordered an investigation into flood-control projects in Cebu, with records showing that 343 such projects were built in the province from 2016 to 2022, and 168 were constructed from 2023 to 2025. How many of those were functional? How many were phantom structures?
These answers would determine not just accountability for past crimes but preparedness for future storms. In a nation that experiences roughly 20 named typhoons annually and faces accelerating climate change, the gap between allocated resources and actual protection could mean the difference between survival and tragedy.
The death toll from Typhoon Kalmaegi would likely climb as search and rescue operations continued. But already, a bitter calculus was being performed: How many of those deaths might have been prevented had the billions allocated for flood control actually been spent on functional infrastructure? How many lives were claimed not by the typhoon itself but by systemic corruption?
